


Rinse

by Qu-ko (Quthemighty)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Female Warrior of Light - Freeform, dragoon warrior of light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 13:48:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12434154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quthemighty/pseuds/Qu-ko
Summary: The baths in Bokairo Inn are a favorite of yours. You may or may not have a long-awaited plan to use them for good... probably.





	Rinse

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if this seems kind of forced, I just wanted to get it out of my system. The idea has been bugging me for ages now. I do think he's mellowed out a lot since Heavensward, though, so... maybe?
> 
> Nondescript reader-insert female WoL, by the way. The only tacked-on assumption is that your main class is Dragoon.

You suppose Estinien must be wondering how, exactly, things got to this point right about now. Or perhaps not; he should know full well how it happened, should be able to trace the entire chain of cause-and-effect all the way back to those days you spent training under Ser Alberic to become the second Azure Dragoon, and then again to the discussion you'd had as he joined you atop the tower to look out at the scenery, as he occasionally does.

But somewhere in the last two minutes, he seems to have lost control of his life. You smirk. If you and Aymeric weren’t around, you swear he’d sit around collecting grime like an old artifact.

“Unhand me.”

The sound of an Eastern-style screen door sliding sideways, and then a grunt of protest as you drag him by the arm into your room at Bokairo Inn.

“Don’t give me that. You haven’t had a bath in weeks, unless you would like to claim otherwise.” You station yourself in front of the door to block his exit and gesture to the bathroom, expectant.

“What?”

“You can’t have a bath with your armor on. And take your boots off, you’re going to ruin the tatami.”

With a defiant glint in his eye, Estinien kicks his greaves off, but is no more compliant after that. You match his stare, unwavering, until eventually you are forced to sigh and move towards him.

“Estinien?”

He watches you warily, something in his expression shifting minutely at the hint of irritation in your voice.

“Cease complaint.”

You shove him hard in the middle of his chest, sending him back against the wall. He lands just next to the fragile bathroom door – a relief, since you suspect his armor would’ve just smashed the glass and ruined any pretense anyway. Then you’re unfastening straps and unbuckling belts as he watches with a look of disgust.

“Don’t get body shy on me,” you say admonishingly.

“Hardly,” he answers, clipped, though he doesn’t struggle any more than hoping his glare will perhaps serve as a lance in its own right. Someone like him wouldn’t have any use for modesty, even though a furtive glance reveals his skin is pocked with old scars that you’re sure must still occasionally ache as if fresh in the deep cold of Ishgard.

Things get easier once the bulk of the armor is off and you’ve pried his lance from his back, something even the Shinsengumi could threaten pain in death about and he still wouldn’t give up. It’s a small but significant measure of trust, even though he still scowls at you like a thundercloud for it. At some point, he actually starts to help with items that can’t just be torn off – like his trousers, you find once the ball has started to roll down the hill faster than you’d anticipated, and his smallclothes after that.

Estinien pushes you away, less of a shove than a simple, straight-up removal of your body from his, and turns around into the bathroom, leveling you a mirror of your earlier expectant look. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You seemed as if you had a plan for this.”

You hesitate, unsure if he’s about to suggest what you think he is. That might’ve been the idea at first, but by how combative he’d gotten, you’d figured it had been shot down by necessity...

“You can’t have a bath with your armor on,” he echoes, and your stomach pitches. Maybe he has no sense of modesty, a trait that’s deeply ingrained into him by his experiences, but you _do_.

“...Fine. One moment.”

But he doesn’t have a moment to wait, it seems, as he disappears into the bathroom without a word, leaving you alone to undress. It at least gives you time to fold your clothes properly and set them aside for later, but the more you manage to peel off of yourself, the more you feel a sense of trepidation. The worst part is, you _know_ it’s just you; Estinien is... Estinien. He has the sense of humor of a wet rag, and even if he’s mellowed out somewhat since the war ended, he just doesn’t seem to mix well with anything more intimate than maybe a handshake.

Then you’re stripped bare in the middle of the sitting room, and terribly cold all of a sudden to boot. Shaking away your second thoughts with a sigh, you slide open the door to a blast of steam, only to find him already sitting in the bath, arms crossed and staring at the wall.

“You must have lost your mind if you actually _want_ me to bathe with you,” you remark sarcastically, taking a seat at the edge of the wooden frame and letting your feet touch the warm water.

“Not my mind. Only my patience.”

“Well, that’s fine. I guess you could use a distraction from your foul mood.” You dip a sponge into the bath and squeeze it dry above his head. He twitches, muscles tensing, but offers no resistance. “I suppose that means it’s up to me to prove to you the uses of a bath, especially these Far Eastern ones.”

It’s only when you step down into the water and drag the sponge over his chest, drizzling water over his skin, that he grabs at your wrist to halt you.

“I am not–” he pauses, then makes an attempt to grab the sponge himself, “I don’t need you to do that.”

A momentary flash in your eyes is his only warning before you twist your hand out of his grip and flick a line of water into his face. “I know you don’t, but I want to. You don’t need to keep such a tight grip on your emotions anymore, either, so hold fucking still unless you want a dunking.”

Estinien leans back, still cross, but sinking into the water a little deeper.

“Fine. Far be it from me to thwart your will.”

He watches, though, as you work the sponge along his body. All too soon, the motions themselves draw him in: the warm water sluicing against his skin; the pleasant scrub of the sponge as it cleanses him of days of accumulated sweat and flakes of crusted blood. He eventually gives up, letting his head drop back against the edge of the bath, eyes falling shut.

“See? Isn’t this fun?” you say, sweeping water-darkened hair across your forehead and out of your eyes.

“If you say so.”

“All right, let me rephrase. Are you enjoying this?”

He gives a nebulous grunt in response. You raise your hands to his shoulders and begin to knead, and the only way you can tell it pleases him is that he doesn’t open his eyes; his physical tells have always been subtle.

“Good. That’s the important part.”

Even when your hands dig a bit too hard at him, the resulting hiss is for adjustment rather than cessation. You’ve long since abandoned the sponge; your hands slide lower and outwards after that, following the slight hollows between his ribs, across his flanks and the grooves of his hips. It’s impossible for him _not_ to see where this is going, and yet...

“I may have been,” you murmur, leaning down to nip at the junction of neck and shoulder, “plotting this for some time.”

Ever since you first experienced the baths here, actually. You shift to get on top of him, spread-eagled in his lap, and you barely have to make contact before the bristling bleeds out of his shoulders, before he pulls you in to fit you against his body like he’s gone as warm as the water around you.

“I knew it,” you say, victorious, “I _knew_ you missed me,” and only drop the grin on your face for the purposes of kissing him.

It turns out Estinien is very good at taking control. Perhaps he would rather not start things, but once the first contact is made, it seems to take very little effort to keep him going. He’s leaning in closer, sliding his fingers up into the waterlogged weight of your hair until it doesn’t seem to matter that you didn’t actually expect to get this far and are stiff with nerves about the possibility of having succeeded.

You pull back to read his expression, but he doesn’t appear to be having second thoughts. In fact, when he reaches for your hips, it’s so that he can guide you into shifting around, the water sloshing against your body as he takes you with him onto the wet wooden ledge above the surface of the water and rearranges you over his thighs.

“Wait,” you breathe, and Estinien makes a frustrated noise.

“Are you stopping?”

“No, I just...” your voice cracks with dissonant effort in your throat, “I didn’t think you wanted...”

“Was it not you who said I no longer need to keep as tight a guard on my emotions?”

Not his mind, he’s said. Only his patience.

Maybe... it’s been in the back of his mind the whole time.

The air is cold on your damp skin, chilling you as much as the leading edge of the nerves in your body, but he doesn’t hesitate for even the space of a word as you start with, “Estinien–” and are forced to close your mouth before you moan aloud when he wastes no time pushing you down onto him, your core muscles closing around him in a firm, rippling squeeze. Your arms lock around his neck as he places his back against the wall to ground himself, shivering once at the shock of cold against his skin, and it’s a reflex you can feel sharply, one that makes you react similarly and crave for more.

“Then... let me have this.”

The murmur breaks all pretense. As you abandon your hold on his neck to grapple at his snowy hair, your hands aren’t gentle as much as desperate, reaching for some vestige of control over the situation, but he takes a breath through his nose and parts your thighs farther, flexing your pelvic floor with just the first few movements in a way that makes you bite off a curse. You then lift and roll your hips to accommodate the motion, to get the most out of the slippery friction and focused stretch of penetration.

At some point, when you bend your neck as if about to fall backwards into the water again, he seizes both your arms and pulls you back in stubbornly, burying his face in your shoulder to scrape the flats of his teeth against the mirror image of his own scars. The aftershock of each bite is so vivid and clear that it allows you to forget they’re even there in the first place.

“Gods,” you growl, tensing your legs further. Estinien says nothing, perhaps literally _cannot_ say anything, but he doesn’t need to, as you can hear every laboring breath, even feel every shuddering burst against the side of your neck. You rut with increasing fervor; he thrusts, and you buck, and then the process repeats anew until the last thread in your tangled mess breaks, and you make a muffled sound when you come, toes curling under you and muscles squeezing hard. Shortly thereafter, he lets go of a low, plaintive moan that you’re sure you’ll carry with you for a while to come, teeth sinking into the side of your throat as his body goes rigid and his cock shudders inside you.

When you regain your breath, still feeling raw and boneless atop him, you find your shoulders shaking with soundless laughter. Estinien cracks an eye to frown at you. “What?”

“Well, it didn’t do much for feeling clean,” you wheeze, “but at least you’ll never doubt the benefits of a well-appointed bath now, right?”

“Yes, I’m sure it will help me slay a hundred enemies, if I ever regain the use of my legs.”

Despite the biting sarcasm, you smile at him, unguarded and fond. You’ve grown desensitized to the scents now, and the water has long ago lost much of its warmth, raising gooseflesh upon your skin in a lukewarm temperature. But you still want to spend a few more moments in quiet, knowing he would never have acquiesced to such a thing if he didn’t mean to.

“Then I’m glad to have been useful, at least.”

His lips twitch; you think you see the beginnings of a smile in there somewhere. “Now to deal with the other issue at hand.”

You reel back a bit and blink. “Other issue?”

“We need another godsdamned bath.”


End file.
